Kaila Charice

Let’s not suck anymore

There was a jumper on the freeway last Friday night. Read that again. THERE WAS A JUMPER ON THE FREEWAY LAST FRIDAY NIGHT. A man was going to jump off of a freeway overpass into on coming traffic in hopes of dying. HOPES OF DYING!

Luckily authorities were able to coerce him back to safety and a psychiatric hold, but it got me thinking… he’s not the only one who’s wanted to do this before, or even the only one who’s attempted to, so… should we all be put on some sort of psychiatric hold at certain times in our life?

Depression is such a common mental illness these days. Many people have at some point in their lives felt lonely/helpless/sad enough that they just don’t want to be here anymore. It’s a feeling brought on by a variety of triggers, and often passes over time.

Suicide is never an answer to problems. Bad days, weeks, months, they happen, but suicide will not make your problems go away. It will make you go away. There is so much help out there for people who need it. Free hotlines, counseling, websites, no matter your situation or social status, there is help. Take it.

It’s entirely possible that this man showed major signs of depression before this night, but these were missed or ignored. What if it were mandatory to place everyone with major depression on 72-hour psychiatric holds? What would happen to suicide rates? We all have problems — it would be like a free period for you to just hash out all of your issues. Obviously a “hold” is a bit extreme and completely impossible to force upon everyone (given our rights and such — go ‘Merica!).

I spoke to someone who specializes in psychological disorders, and here’s what I learned: there are levels of “suicidalness.” (I think I made up a word.) Anyway, it’s common for people to feel they don’t want to “be around” anymore at some point in their lives.

When you just want to escape the world, that’s level one, or the bottom of the pyramid. Next is the middle of the pyramid: those who think of ways to execute not being here anymore. These people definitely need close watching. Then, there’s the top of the pyramid: those who feel like they don’t want to be here, who think of how to accomplish no longer being alive, and who act on this impulse and attempt suicide.

Suicide. Think about it. Once you commit it (unless you fail) you don’t come back. Sometimes I wonder if people who actually attempt suicide really think it’s their only option or if they’re simply caught up in everything that’s going wrong in their lives and they need an escape. Unfortunately, suicide is a permanent escape.

Then there’s “suicide bullying.” That’s the epitome of tragedy — pushing someone to the point of wanting to die. It’s 2014. Bullying should’ve gone out of style along with bellbottom jeans and neon, but unfortunately it’s only worsened. Now there are anti-bullying campaigns.

We, as a society, suck. We’ve become so awful that we have to throw oodles of money into organizations to remind people to stop being such assholes to each other. That’s pathetic, but apparently necessary.

There’s always a reason to dislike someone, but think how much more awesome this generation would be if we looked past that and instead tried harder to find reasons to like people. It’s important to remember that we aren’t in this world alone.

Seriously — let’s be a better fucking generation.

People get caught up in their own lives. It’s not a bad thing, per se, it’s just a fact. I am totally guilty of this. I was so excited the other day that I paid the toll for the car behind me. I told my friend and he said, “Oh good, you did something good for someone without any sort of personal interaction whatsoever.” Slightly less excited about my “good deed” now, I thought about it. He was right.

A lot of times I try to just go about my day. I look forward or down, and don’t really pay attention to what’s around me so that I stay focused on whatever it is I’m doing. Kindness does not have to involve money — it can be as simple as a smile. Before my friend made that comment, I was always a little afraid to smile at people. I didn’t want it to be taken as creepy or the wrong way. I’d think about how the situation could go wrong for me instead of how it might affect someone else. Since this chat, I’ve made a point to look around at my surroundings more, to smile at people and acknowledge their presence.

I follow “Humans of New York” on Facebook and Instagram. The page posts photos of people with a caption, usually a quote the person said or how they acted when they were approached. One stood out to me in particular: a woman, probably in her 30-40s, gray hair, and she told the photographer, “I’m shocked that you came up to me. Nobody’s ever done that.” She went on to discuss depression and weight loss and gain. And what she’s learned in life and how her therapist has helped her.

But it was the quote that stood out. Pure acknowledgement can go a long way.

I’m not saying a smile would have changed the jumper’s problems, but he obviously needed help. A smile, or some sort of acknowledgement, could have changed the way he thinks, his trigger would have been let go, or perhaps less tightly clamped.

Let’s turn this world around. The only thing that can drive out darkness is light.

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suicide baiting prevention is a FB page started by Kathie Yount & a few friends after her son, Dylan Yount was baited into jumping off the Forever Twentyone Building in San Francisco on Feb1 ,2010. Her case against SFPD is coming up in August. The police did nothing to stop the taunting crowd for 45 minutes! As a matter of fact it was caught on tape police talking ,saying he’d never do it & he was wasting their time. One actually said “Go inside, you fool”. Wow shaming a mentally ill person is a tactic the police use?

I think this isnt so much about suicide baiting, I think this is about a much much wider spectrum. We as a nation are rude. We are hateful, hurtful and inconsiderate. We are all consumed with where we need to go what we need to do and who we need to step on to get there. We are so all consumed with this nonsensical drivel, we are hard pressed to notice those that we obliterate around us. Someone told me once that I am too much in the morning, too happy too chatty too animated. I stared him down and lifted a brow before I sunk my teeth deep into his complaining flesh verbally “Maybe the cheer in the morning that I offer is the difference in some guys mood who if I wasn’t nice he would continue to be a piss ass go home yell at his wife who puts the kids in the car and drives distracted because she is upset crashes into a school bus kills herself, her kids and all the kids on the school bus so now every single person that is connected to every person in that accident is effected and it goes on and on and on SAY thank you when I smile at you and LEAVE here and HAVE A GOOD DAY!”

Kaila, I read your post on the day it was posted and wanted to comment, but I was too busy at that time. I’m glad of that now or I might not ever have seen the comments that lidine and Kathleen attached (all good points). There is a psychiatric hold, known as a 5150, that can keep a person who might be a danger to himself or others in a hospital for 48 hours in most states, but it is quite controversial. I enjoyed reading your convictions about how permanent suicide is. What we should all take away after reading your column is how practicing kindness more often would help. Acknowledging the jumper’s pain, I believe WOULD have helped to lessen his “trigger.” We have all read many personal accounts where an unexpected kindness pulled a suicidal person back from the abyss. You are so right. We CAN turn the world around by being kind — beginning with the person standing next to us!

suicide baiting prevention is a FB page started by Kathie Yount & a few friends after her son, Dylan Yount was baited into jumping off the Forever Twentyone Building in San Francisco on Feb1 ,2010. Her case against SFPD is coming up in August. The police did nothing to stop the taunting crowd for 45 minutes! As a matter of fact it was caught on tape police talking ,saying he’d never do it & he was wasting their time. One actually said “Go inside, you fool”. Wow shaming a mentally ill person is a tactic the police use?

I think this isnt so much about suicide baiting, I think this is about a much much wider spectrum. We as a nation are rude. We are hateful, hurtful and inconsiderate. We are all consumed with where we need to go what we need to do and who we need to step on to get there. We are so all consumed with this nonsensical drivel, we are hard pressed to notice those that we obliterate around us. Someone told me once that I am too much in the morning, too happy too chatty too animated. I stared him down and lifted a brow before I sunk my teeth deep into his complaining flesh verbally “Maybe the cheer in the morning that I offer is the difference in some guys mood who if I wasn’t nice he would continue to be a piss ass go home yell at his wife who puts the kids in the car and drives distracted because she is upset crashes into a school bus kills herself, her kids and all the kids on the school bus so now every single person that is connected to every person in that accident is effected and it goes on and on and on SAY thank you when I smile at you and LEAVE here and HAVE A GOOD DAY!”

Kaila, I read your post on the day it was posted and wanted to comment, but I was too busy at that time. I’m glad of that now or I might not ever have seen the comments that lidine and Kathleen attached (all good points). There is a psychiatric hold, known as a 5150, that can keep a person who might be a danger to himself or others in a hospital for 48 hours in most states, but it is quite controversial. I enjoyed reading your convictions about how permanent suicide is. What we should all take away after reading your column is how practicing kindness more often would help. Acknowledging the jumper’s pain, I believe WOULD have helped to lessen his “trigger.” We have all read many personal accounts where an unexpected kindness pulled a suicidal person back from the abyss. You are so right. We CAN turn the world around by being kind — beginning with the person standing next to us!